The World's 18 Strangest Movie Sets

In the age of CGI, it's rare for filmmakers to spend a sizable chunk of their budget on an elaborate set. With that, let's take a look at 18 interesting movie sets that span the past 95 years of cinema.

In the age of computer-generated images, it's rare for filmmakers to spend a sizable chunk of their budget on an elaborate set that can more easily be created on a computer screen and digitally inserted into any scene. That doesn't mean there's not still some interesting sets from the past few years, but the overwhelming amount of awesome and weird sets were built before the age of CGI. With that, let's take a look at 18 interesting movie sets that span the past 95 years of cinema.

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The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Background:The Empire Strikes Back was the first sequel of the Star Wars franchise. Before Star Wars became synonymous with CGI, painstaking work was done to complete realistic sets—not to dazzle, but to make the experience more believable.

How It's Unique:The Empire Strikes Back is the only film of the original trilogy where a full-size Millennium Falcon was constructed. For the first Star Wars (or A New Hope, if you must), only a portion of Han Solo's freighter was constructed. In Return of the Jedi, a the Falcon appears only in a background matte painting. (One scene with a portion of the Falcon model, taking place during a sandstorm, was cut from the film.) In the end, the life-size Falcon was approximately 70 feet in diameter, weighed 25 tons and was moved with compressed-air hover pads.

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Intolerance (1916)

Background: In 1915, D.W. Griffith released The Birth of a Nation—a technical marvel from a filmmaking point of view but, unfortunately, blatantly racist. Griffith, in response to his critics, released Intolerance the following year.

How It's Unique:Intolerance takes place over the course of 2453 years—yes, you read that right—showing the roots of intolerance in cultures ranging from 539 B.C. all the way to the modern era (at the time) of 1914. Griffith built enormous sets, including a life-size Great Wall of Babylon in Los Angeles, and used 3000 extras for a production that cost more than $2 million. The film eventually bankrupted Griffith's studio.

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Metropolis (1927)

Background: At $5 million, Metropolis is the most expensive silent film of all time. Set in the future, the movie is a statement on social classes, divided here into strict categories of management and workers.

How It's Unique: An entire city was built as a miniature model so a camera could pan through, making it appear to be a living, breathing future city. Special-effects supervisor Eugen Schüfftan developed a technique that used mirrors to place actors into the miniature city to make it appear more lifelike; the technique was later called the Schüfftan process.

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Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Background: Based on the play The Gold Diggers, this movie had a lavish set (costing around half a million dollars) labeled The Biggest Show on Earth. Also of note: There were multiple versions of the film distributed for fear of censorship in the South—some of the shots of the dancers were considered, shall we say, risqué.

How It's Unique: Four dance numbers were produced for the film that were, right smack in the middle of The Great Depression, not particularly frugal. Actually, the fact that this film spent what it did on its set in the middle of the Depression is what makes it interesting. Take "We're in the Money": The set features a silver stage with four gigantic coins looming in the background—four coins that, unfortunately, many people who couldn't afford to see Gold Diggers of 1933 could surely have used.

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The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

Background: In 1983, Steven Spielberg and John Landis brought the cult favorite, The Twilight Zone, to the big screen. Divided into four segments, the film told four separate, unrelated stories directed by Spielberg, Landis, Joe Dante and George Miller.

How It's Unique: What's amazing, even today, is that a film that was made not that long ago featured a set that was so dangerous—especially dangerous to the actual stars of the film and not to trained stunt professionals. During the Landis-directed segment, Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen were all killed by the blades from a low-flying helicopter that lost control during a pyrotechnics explosion.

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Apollo 13 (1995)

Background: Based on the doomed 1970 lunar mission of the same name, the film starred Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell in Ron Howard's dramatization. Hanks—who had just won back-to-back Oscars—failed to pick up a nomination for Apollo 13, but the film was a huge box-office success: It grossed more than $355 million worldwide.

How It's Unique: There were no wires, CGI or other movie magic involved in the scenes of Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton in the weightlessness of space. The actors were riding in a NASA's KC-135 (also known as The Vomit Comet, or The Weightless Wonder), which flies in an elliptic flight path. At certain points, the aircraft is in free fall, which can produce limited amounts of weightlessness for up to 25 seconds. The Apollo 13 spacecraft used in the film was built to fit inside this plane, and almost four hours of footage was shot of the actors in true weightless surroundings.

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WarGames (1983)

Background: When WarGames was released in 1983, when the Cold War was still a very real thing, the thought of hacking into the government's computer systems and accidentally starting World War III didn't seem too far fetched.

How It's Unique:WarGames was, for obvious reasons, not allowed to film at the actual location of NORAD. So, instead, a set was built—the most expensive single set at that time—to re-create NORAD. Of course, some embellishments were added: Director John Badham said his NORAD was a "wet dream" of the actual location.

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Apocalypse Now (1979)

Background: This Francis Ford Coppola–directed film became known for the tumultuous shoot and the aloofness of its star, Marlon Brando. The shoot became so infamous that a separate film, Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, was released documenting the troubled production. Apocalypse Now would eventually be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture (it lost to Kramer vs. Kramer).

How It's Unique: During the shoot, which took place in the Philippines to represent Vietnam, a typhoon destroyed a portion of the sets three months into production. All of those sets had to be rebuilt, including one that involved a visit by Playboy Playmates. A French plantation scene that cost the production thousands of dollars was never even used for the final film. What was supposed to be a five-month shoot lasted almost 15 months.

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Team America: World Police (2004)

Background: Directed by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the force behind South Park, Team America was a biting satire on the U.S.'s involvement in world skirmishes. Most notable is that the film stars a cast of marionettes, the likes of which haven't been seen since the days of Thunderbirds.

How It's Unique: The set, built in a warehouse in Culver City, Calif., featured a reproduction of the Paris city center, including famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre. A Mount Rushmore replica was built for Team America's base. Most impressive: A model of the Panama Canal was built to an astonishing one-third scale.

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Playland

Background: Located in Rye, New York, Playland isn't a movie but an amusement park that you have no doubt seen in many feature films. In fact, if a film is at all set in the New York area and an amusement park is needed for a scene, Playland is the go-to destination, with its scenic view over Long Island Sound.

How It's Unique: Playland is unique for the number of times that it has appeared in well-known films. Remember when Tom Hanks tracks down the illusive Zoltar machine at the end of Big? That happened at Playland. The Muppets visited Playland in The Muppets Take Manhattan. Glen Close, when she wasn't boiling pet rabbits in Fatal Attraction, made a visit to Playland. The amusement park is also featured in the films Tenderness and Sweet and Lowdown and in numerous television productions.

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Waterworld (1995)

Background: Though it's often cited as a financial failure, Waterworld was actually a mild success, grossing $264 million worldwide. Set in the distant future, the film envisions the polar ice caps having melted, leaving a world with massively high sea levels and very little land.

How It's Unique: Considering that dry land is hard to come by in Waterworld, most of the sets are based at sea. Most filming took place on a 365-foot-diameter atoll built off the coast of Hawaii for the production. For the wider shots, the atoll was moved out farther into the ocean to create the illusion of no land. The production budget ballooned when part of the set was destroyed by weather.

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Titanic (1997)

Background: At the time, James Cameron's Titanic was the most expensive film ever shot. Conversely, at least until James Cameron's next film, Avatar, came along, it was also the most financially successful film of all time.

How It's Unique: Much like in Waterworld, many scenes of the doomed ship were filmed at a water tank off the coast of Mexico that held 17 million gallons of water. In those 17 million gallons of water: A partially working full-scale model of the original RMS Titanic.

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Cleopatra (1963)

Background: To this day, Cleopatra is the only film to be the highest-grossing movie of its year ($26 million) yet still lose money.

How It's Unique: Adjusted for inflation, Cleopatra is still one of the most expensive films ever made, costing an unheard of $44 million in 1963. The film's sets are remarkable for just how much money was dumped into them and for the sheer number —79 sets in all! Cleopatra almost put 20th Century Fox out of business. Epic battles, cities rebuilt due to the English climate (Alexandria had to be built three times), expensive exotic plants and eventually relocating the sets to Rome, where they all had to be rebuilt—all these still make any over-budget film today pale in comparison.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

Background: In terms of dollars (not adjusted for inflation), at $300 million, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is the most expensive film ever made.

How It's Unique: An 80 by 130–foot water tank was built on the Universal Studio lot. Inside the tank, 40 separate structures were built in an effort to reproduce Singapore, circa 18th century. Later, during a shoot to film the final battle scene, the cast suffered through freezing temperatures in order to prevent disease spreading from the water-soaked set.

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The Conqueror (1956)

Background: The last film ever produced by Howard Hughes, this John Wayne movie didn't even see the light of day until 1974. Because of how terrible the final product turned out, Hughes refused to allow the release until, finally, a studio reached a financial agreement with the reclusive director.

How It's Unique: It's not the lavishness or size of the set that makes this one unique, but its location: The Conqueror was filmed near St. George, UT, only 137 miles from the U.S. government's nuclear testing sites. Though there's never been any specific proof that the proximity to the testing sites caused any harm to the cast and crew, the numbers are a bit startling. Of the 200 people who worked on the film, 91 of them had developed cancer over the next 25 years.

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

Background: Based on the highly successful book series about a special young wizard and his friends, Harry Potter has also become one of the most successful film franchises in history. The series will conclude in 2011 with the eighth film, Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

How It's Unique: The Hogwarts' castle used in the first two Harry Potter films is an actual castle built in 1096 called Alnwick. Of course, the wide-angle shots are CGI, but the interior and exterior shots are filmed at Alnwick. (Alnwick was also used in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and in the updated version starring Russell Crowe, Robin Hood.) And lots of the film's sets—including Privet Drive, where Harry lives during his summers in the Muggle world—were actually built at Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire, England.

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War of the Worlds (2005)

Background: Steven Spielberg's 2005 remake of the alien invasion movie War of the Worlds is Tom Cruise's most successful film of all time: It grossed just under $600 million worldwide.

How It's Unique: For a scene where a plane crash occurs outside of a character's house, filmmakers re-created an entire 747 jet split into several pieces. This set is so impressive that it remains on the Universal Studio's lot and is available to tour.

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Return of the Jedi (1983)

Background: The Original trilogy of the Star Wars saga concluded with 1983's Return of the Jedi. Even on the third Star Wars installment, actual sets and on-location filming made up the majority of the film.

How It's Unique: Filmed in Arizona's Yuma Desert, the sarlacc pit/Jabba sail barge set was one of the most elaborate ever created up until that point. The sarlacc was also one of the biggest set failures: The hydraulic mechanisms became clogged from the blowing sand, leaving George Lucas with a monster he didn't find threatening in the least. Of course, the sarlacc was completely redesigned with CGI when Return of the Jedi was re-released as a special edition in 1997.

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